


The Bitch of Living

by XiaoHuo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Clint Barton Has Issues, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Foster System, Gen, Kid Clint, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Protective Steve Rogers, barney barton is a dick, but clint is a teenager, everyone is their normal age, good guy steve
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-20 10:08:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3646296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XiaoHuo/pseuds/XiaoHuo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint just woke up in the hospital after his whole live has gone to shit.<br/>Now he's supposed to live with his "cousin" Steve Rogers, but he's pretty sure that the guy isn't related to him and he seems to hide something about his job, no history teacher gets called out in the middle of the night and comes back with bruises. </p>
<p>AU in which the Avengers are still the Avengers but Clint is  Steve's 16 year-old  great-grandson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Clint woke up.  
He knew without opening his eyes that he had to be in a hospital. After the beating he had gotten there really wasn’t any other place he could be. Especially not when wasn’t in excruciating pain or freezing from lying in some side alley in New York.   
He tried to hear if anyone else was in the room. Maybe a cop or two. His left ear was still busted, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t hear anything with it, just not every small sound.

After a short time he gave up. He couldn’t hear any voices or strange movement. Even if there were cops in his room, pretending to sleep wasn’t going to help him get rid of them. Slowly he opened his eyes.

Yep, he was in hospital all right. But luckily no one else was in the room. It was small, and there was a second bed not too far away from his, but no one was in it.  
It seemed to be occupied though, the sheets were only loosely put back in place over the bed, and there were flowers on the bedside table.  
The walls were painted in an ugly green that could only be described as the colour of vomit. Odd choice for a hospital, Clint thought. There was a window, but from what he could see from his bed he was too far up in the building to jump to the ground. Probably 5th or 6th floor. The room had two doors, one that seemed to lead to the hallway and a second smaller one that probably lead to a small bathroom.

All right, he’d better get a move on. If he was lucky nobody had figured out who he was and they’d classified him as just another John Doe. Best leave while he still could.  
He looked down on himself and tried to figure out how bad his injuries were, from the level of pain he was in, not to bad. But he suspected that was because they had given him the so-called “good stuff” which would wear off soon enough.  
He had to know if he could make it on his own. He couldn’t take the chance to stay here.  
None of his limbs were in casts, and that was a relieve, the hassle of trying to get out of town with a broken leg would have been terrible.  
On his right hand his middle and ring finger where bandaged together with a splint. He hoped it was only a sprain or hairline fracture. Both his arms were littered with dark bruises, blue and green. He lifted the blanket covering him slowly, and moved the hospital gown up to his breast, he was bandaged around his torso. Tight, even bandages, so probably a cracked rib or two. The pain would kick in soon enough, he knew from experience.  
His inspection moved on to his legs, nothing too bad there, again mostly bruising, and a bandage on his right calf. He tried to remember what kind of injury he might have there, but it was all too hazy in his mind.

Having taken in his injuries Clint decided that the faster he got out of that hospital the better. Glad that he wasn’t attached to any machinery. There was an IV-line in his left hand that was connected to some sort of liquid dangling from a metal stand. He guessed it was full of meds that were supposed to keep him hydrated or something like that. Slowly and carefully he removed the needle from the top of his hand. He sat up straight, which caused a jolt of pain to shoot through his ribs, even though the painkillers were still in full effect.

At the far wall of the room, were two closets, hopefully his roommate had some spare clothes in there. Clint was in luck, as he painfully opened the closet door he was greeted with the sight of several pairs of jeans and quite a lot of sweaters. His roommate apparently had planned a longer stay.

The jeans he put on were too long and loose around his hips, but that wasn’t a surprise. Clint was short for his age and scrawny, if they had put him in an adult wing (which by the looks of the undecorated ugly ass walls, was the case) then the likelihood of the previous owner of these clothes being bigger than him, was pretty much 100 %.

After he had put on one of the shirts and taken another two, as backup for colder days, he closed the closet door. He wanted to move back to the bed, to get going. But as soon as he closed the door he froze. Behind it stood another person.  
Looking at Clint, not saying a word. Clint blamed his messed up ear and the pain meds for not hearing this guy creep up. He frowned. If this was the owner of the clothes he’d be pissed.

The guy didn’t look all that sick though. Dark hair, with specs of grey in it, big, but not huge nose. He was of pretty much average height, so about head taller than Clint, and wore a ridiculous looking knitted sweater.

“Ah, Clinton, I’m glad you woke up. Already feeling better I see. “ His voice was deep and calm, Clint hated it right away. Smug bastard. How the hell did that guy know his name?? He didn’t look all that much like a doctor, but what did Clint know. The last time he had seen one outside of TV was when his mum was still around.

“Oh, hey… yeah… I don know who y’ are, but you got it wrong, man. Name’s not Clinton. Don’t know any Clintons… so “

The stranger didn’t seem to buy it. “I’m sorry, “ he said, smiling a little and looking Clint in the eyes. “My name’s Tom Lydon, I’m with Child Protective Services here in New York. And I’m very sure that you are Clinton Francis Barton. 16 year old run-away extraordinaire. “

“No- no I’m not.” Clint felt panicked; he had to get out of here. How did fucking CPS know he was here? He was in an adult room, why did they know he was only a kid. He had to get away as fast as he could  
“I’m called J-James, Moriarty, actu’lly. So yeah, I’m not this Clint Barton guy, and I’m no fucking run away either. I’m 19, so there is nothing to run away from… I’m just leavin’, so could you get outta my way?”

“James Moriarty? Like the bad guy in Sherlock Holmes?” The social worker looked at him, still with his little smile on his face. “ I’m sorry Clint. I’m sure this is all a lot to take in, waking up in hospital, me just showing up out of nowhere. I was hoping to get here before you woke up. How about we sit down for a little while and have a chat” He indicated Clint’s bed with his left hand.

What choice did Clint have) run? He wouldn’t get far. Hospital security was probably everywhere. His only chance had been to sneak out, without anybody seeing him. Running through the corridors with an angry dude from CPS after him, wasn’t going to work out.

He sat down on his bed. The social worker got a chair that was standing next to the closet and moved it closer to the bed. “Listen, Tim, or whatever. My parents were big Sherlock Holmes fans, so what? I’m not who you’re looking for, so you can just go. No hard feelings”

“It’s Tom, “ Tom said, he opened the satchel he was wearing and took out an official looking file. He opened the file and showed Clint a photo. Two boys, frowning at the camera, the older of the two, he was maybe 14 had dark red hair, and a very bruised jaw, the younger one, who looked 2 or 3 years younger, had blond hair, sticking up into every direction. His frown seemed less sincere than that of his older brother; more put on for effect for the photo. Clint didn’t remember that picture being taken. It must have been at the first foster home.

“So you are telling me you are not this boy?” Tom said, pointing at Clint on the picture.  
“Yeah, no, that’s not me.”  
“You sure look like him, and tell you what James, you even have the same finger prints as this kid” Tom’s smile widened. The fucker. He had known all along that there was nothing Clint could say to get out of this. Might as well give up now.

“Listen Clint, you are not in trouble. We just want to help you. When you came to this hospital you were very badly beaten up. You were unconscious for several days. We will prote-”

“so how’d you figure out it was me?” Clint interrupted, “unconscious dude in a New York hospital, why’d they even run my prints? And why can people in this city look at my fucking finger prints, anyway?”

“Well, the hospital called the police, because you had clearly been assaulted, and you seemed under-aged. And your fingerprints are in the federal database for missing children. They have been ever since you and your brother took off from your,” Tom glanced at the file he was still holding “second foster family.”

“so if the hospital thought I was a kid, why am I in this room?”  
“Paediatrics ward is undergoing renovations”

“So Tom, “ Clint pronounced the name with as much sarcasm as possible, wouldn’t want the guy to get too chummy with him.  
“what do you wanna do with me now? Back to Iowa? Cause I’m not gonna just stay there.”  
“Actually, Clint, since I have gotten your case file I have been able to track down one of your relatives. Or rather, they have been able to track me down.”  
Clint stared at him, what relatives? He didn’t have any, except for Barney, and yeah... he didn’t want to think about that fucking mess right now.  
“what?” was all he could manage to say  
“Yes, I’m sure it must come as a pretty big surprise to you. The guy even lives here in New York. I have spoken to him and explained your situation. He seems to be a distant cousin, he was doing a bit of genealogy and found ou-“  
“yeah, whatever!” Clint nearly shouted “what does this dude want???”  
“he’d be willing to take you in after you have been released from the hospital.” Tom said, smiling at Clint, like he had just told him Christmas had come early.  
“and what? You’re just gonna let some random ass dude take a kid home with him? How’d even know he really is related to me, huh?

“Like I was trying to say earlier,” Tom replied, a bit more annoyed than before, “He is a cousin of you mom’s. Didn’t have that much contact with her. But now he wants to help you. Child protective services has vetted him, and we have no objections to him taking care of you for a while”

“Great, “ Clint said. Fucking great. Some weird psycho was going to take him home.  
“well, if you don’t like it, Clint, I’m sure we’ll find another solution. But how about you meet your cousin first. I’ll bring him by tomorrow, so the two of you can get to know each other. How does that sound?”

“fucking awful!” Clint hissed and threw himself back on the bed, immediately regretting it. His entire body started to hurt like hell. “fuck!” he couldn’t help but yell.

“All right, calm down, I’ll get a nurse in here to help you. And then you should probably get some more rest. You must be very exhausted, and hungry.”

Tom got up and left the room, a nurse came in a short while later with some food and she reattached the IV line to Clint’s hand. Tom only stopped by again to tell Clint that the nurses would make sure he didn’t go anywhere and that they’d see each other again the next day.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning Clint was sitting on his hospital bed eating his breakfast. Admittedly it was nice to just have food brought to you at fixed times, but that didn’t improve his mood over the current situation much. His roommate had come back shortly after the social worker had left and Clint was just glad that the nurse had put the guy’s stuff back in the closet.  
Apparently he was there for something with his heart, Clint didn’t really listen and tried to ignore the man as much as possible.  
He was about 5’7” or 5’8”, not that tall, but still taller than Clint. His belly wasn’t as big as Clint would have guessed from the jeans and sweaters he had tried to steal, must have lost a lot of weight recently.  
With another person in the room, it felt even smaller and claustrophobic. Clint felt like he had no way out. Once this alleged cousin would get here he’d be shipped off with him, and he had a pretty good idea what happened to scrawny kids in the homes of strange men. But he was too weak to run, and the nurses had kept a close watch on his room the whole night.

Clint finished his breakfast and continued to stare at the tray. There wasn’t anything else to do. He didn’t want to look up, in case the annoying old guy in the bed next to him would try to talk again.

Eventually Clint did look up though, as he heard footsteps getting closer to their room. A nurse with bright pink scrubs was coming into the room, she looked at Clint and smiled at him. Clint tried to look as menacing a possible.

“Hello sweetie, how are you doing?” she asked.  
Clint didn’t answer. “Alrighty, I’m here to take a look at your bandages, so let’s move this out of the way.”  
She moved the bedside table away from Clint’s bed and proceeded to check all his wounds. All the while giving a running commentary of what she was doing, Clint assumed she did it to calm him down and to be reassuring. He kept frowning, but secretly he was glad about her explanations, he got a better idea of the shitty state his body was in that way.

She told him that his right middle finger was broken, but had been reset early enough and should heal well. His right calf sported a cut that ran from just under his knee to close to the ankle at the outer side; the nurse said he had gotten 12 stitches to keep the wound closed. She kept chatting happily and told him how fast he could expect his ribs to heal, one was in fact broken, just like Clint had suspected.

All in all Clint was relieved, it could have been a lot worse. The ribs would hurt like hell, but they’d heal soon enough, and he could live with the rest.

“Well sweetie, I’m done here now. The doctor will be by in a little bit and see if they’ll release you soon. Maybe even already today, “ the nursed said smiling “doesn’t that sound great?”

Clint didn’t answer. No, that didn’t sound great at all. He had hoped to have some more time in the hospital to plot his escape. Being released today would mean going home with his “cousin” and he was sure that it’d be a bad experience.  
The nurse moved on to talk to Clint’s roommate. And Clint was annoyed to discover that she used a far more reasonable and less excessively upbeat tone of voice with the man. He had always hated being treated like a little kid, even when he had been one. And now after having been abandoned by the only people he had still cared about, he didn’t feel like there was anything childlike left within him. He certainly did not need to be called “sweetie”. 

Breakfast and the visit from the nurse had left Clint surprisingly exhausted. So he drifted back to uneasy sleep. When he woke he heard low murmuring close to his ears. He opened his eyes and found Tom, the social worker from the previous night, and another man talking with each other.   
The other man had to be his long lost relative. Even though the guy was sitting in the hospital chair, Clint could tell that he was huge. The guy had to be at least six foot tall, maybe even more. And he was muscled too. Broad shoulders and strong looking arms.   
Well, fuck, Clint thought. If he had thought that things couldn’t get any worse before, he had been mistaken. Of course things could get worse. He was Clint Barton after all, things always got worse for him. So now he’d have to go live with some damn marine, who probably worked as a bouncer for fun. 

Tom and Clint’s relative noticed that he had woken up and stopped their conversation, noth turned to look at Clint.   
“Finally he wakes,” Tom said, in what was probably supposed to be a cheerful tone.   
“How are you feeling, Clint?” he asked.   
Clint just shrugged and didn’t answer. Maybe if he was a uncooperative as humanly possible the stupid marine-look-alike would decide against keeping him.   
It didn’t seem likely though, since the guy just smiled at Clint’s non answer and started to introduce himself, in a calm and steady voice.   
“Hello Clint, my name’s Steve Rogers. I’m very glad to meet you. - “ it seemed like Steve wanted to say more but Clint interrupted him with a rude: “yeah, I’m fucking not.“  
Neither Steve nor Tom were phased by this.   
“I’m sorry about that, pal. I know the circumstances are pretty bad. I bet you’re not feeling too great either. Broken ribs hurt like hell.” Steve said.   
“ ‘cause they fucking hurt,” Clint mumbled. Somehow he took it as a bit of a good sign that Steve had cursed in front of him. At least now he knew he wasn’t going to have his mouth washed out with soap or some other nonsense that his first super religious foster mother had tried to do to him.   
“Alright, “ Tom beamed at them, “maybe you want to introduce yourself to Clint, Steve. Tell him a bit about yourself. I’ll go and get us some more coffee and a soda for Clint.” 

Clint scowled he wanted to tell Tom where he could stick his soda, but at the same time he never turned down free food or drink, you never knew when something else might come along. So he settled for saying nothing, while looking as angry as he could. 

Once Tom had left, Steve scooted closer to Clint’s hospital bed with his chair and started to talk again. 

“I’m sure you are very confused about who I am and where I came from all of a sudden,” he ignored the derisive snort that Clint made at that statement. “To tell you the truth I didn’t really know you, or your brother, existed until a few months ago. I’m a history teacher” Clint rolled his eyes at that. “and I was working on a project about genealogy with my class early last semester, and while looking at my own family tree, I noticed that I knew virtually nothing about your mom’s family. I did some digging, found out that she had married you dad in 1995. And that she had 2 kids, but appart from that there wasn’t much out there.”   
“My parents died in 2005, car crash.” Clint said, while looking at his hands.   
“Yes, I know, I’m sorry about that,” Steve seemed genuinely upset. He wouldn’t be if he’d known my dad, Clint thought bitterly.   
“‘s not your fault, or nothin’”   
“No, but it’s still sad.”   
Clint shrugged.   
There was a pause in their conversation.   
After a short while Clint asked: “So, how’d you find me then?”  
“When I first found out I had other living relatives I asked Social Services to put my in contact with you and your brother, “ Clint frowned at the mention of Barney. “And they took my name on file in case either of you ever showed up. I was actually pretty surprised to get the call yesterday, saying you were in hospital.” 

“Yeah? I was pretty surprised to wake up in hospital, so I guess we have something in common.” Despite himself, Clint found himself warming up to his long lost relative. He tried to remind himself that whenever he trusted anyone things only got worse for him. And this wasn’t going to be an exception. 

“Clint?,” Steve asked.   
“Yeah?”   
“I know you didn’t want to tell the Doctors or the Police what happened, and I don’t expect you to tell me right away, just know that I’ll listen when you are ready to. Whoever did this to you, deserves to be punished. They won't get away with it.”

Clint laughed, a joyless sort of snicker. 

“Yeah, right.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Steve found out he was a great-grand father.

A year earlier Steve had been trying to get used to modern New York after having been frozen in arctic ice for over 40 years. After the chaos that was the Battle of New York he tried to learn as much as he could about what had happened in those missing years. The Internet helped of course, he could just look anything up. And often he’d get lost and he would ask himself how he had ended up on the Wikipedia page for some obscure potato dish that was only eaten in a small village in rural Kazakhstan. Only to discover that he had already been online for 5 hours.

Part of his effort to catch up on the 21st century was figuring out what happened to people he knew. Often it was very simple. They had died. Peggy hadn’t. She was still alive; he visited her every now and then. He had no family left. The few relatives that he had still known in the 1930s had passed and few had ever had children. He had already abandoned the idea of tracking down any great grand cousins.  
Then Nick Fury, the Director of SHIELD, called him in to introduce the “Insight” project. And of course that had been when his whole life was once again turned completely upside down. To stop HYDRA the Black Widow had revealed all of SHIELD’s information, their entire database had been made public.  
Newspapers set up whole teams to sift through the masses of data in hopes of finding interesting stories, and there were many to be found.  
After things had settled down in DC Steve had moved back to his old neighbourhood in New York. He spend much of his time looking for clues about the whereabouts of the Winter Soldier. This search was also why he was on his way to Avenger’s Tower on a cold January morning. He wanted to ask Tony about any possible progress in the search.

He found the genius engineer in his workshop.  
“Hello Tony,” he said.  
“Oh, Capsicle!” Tony looked surprised to see him. “I was actually just about to call you. I found something.”  
Steve felt relieve. Finally! A lead.  
Tony waved his arms around and a holographic screen appeared in the middle of the room, on the screen was a list of names and dates.  
“Alright, show him the file.” Tony said, to the computer, or JARVIS, or both. Steve was never sure.  
The dates disappeared and what looked like a scan of an old report showed up.  
The paper looked brown and stained, some of the handwritten notes were faded.  
Steve frowned. “What does an old SHIELD report have to do with finding Bucky?” he asked.  
“Oh, this isn’t about your BFF. This is far more interesting.” Tony replied, gleefully.   
“Tony, I don’t really have time…”  
“Believe me, Cap, you want to know this.”  
Steve gave Tony a skeptical look but nodded nonetheless.  
“Alright. Since our favourite Russian redhead has released all of SHIELD’s files I've had JARVIS run some scans. Just looking for useful and interesting things, you know. I found some nice stories, but JARVIS just alerted me to this a couple of hours ago.”  
Steve wondered where all this was going.  
“Read the file.” Tony instructed.

Steve looked more closely at the document. It was dated for October 23rd 1944, and it appeared to be a report on the birth of a child. Steve kept reading, he was curious why Tony thought this would be of interest to him. The report detailed the birth of the child, exact time measurements as well as all information about the infant. Including the name. And this was where Steve stopped in shock. The infant had been called John Rogers. And underneath that parents were listed as Joan Mary Wesley and Steven Grant Rogers*.

“How is this possible?? I never met that woman.”  
Tony laughed “Or you just can’t remember.”  
“No,” Steve started to defend himself.  
“Just messing with you. Look at that little asterisk next to your name? I read the whole report. You never had any relationship with that woman.”  
Steve looked at Tony. “They used your samples, that you gave to them who knows why.” Again Tony laughed, apparently he thought the idea of Steve given those kinds of donations was funny to him.  
“I had to,” Steve replied a little perturbed. “After Erskine died they needed anything I could give, to figure out how the super soldier serum worked.”  
“Or they wanted to see if it was locked in the genes and was hereditary. ‘Cause that’s why they made this baby.”  
“It wasn’t hereditary.” Steve said.  
“You are right, otherwise there’d be a whole army of super soldiers. This isn’t the only report about John Rogers. Seems like after they figured out the baby had no special powers the put him up for adoption. Gave him to some people to raise as their own.”  
“I have a son that they never told me about,” Steve balled up his hands to fists. How could they just do that? What right did they have to make that sort of decision without ever having consulted him.  
As if he could read Steve’s thoughts Tony said: “You were probably already frozen at that point.”  
Steve shook his head. “That still doesn’t make it right.”  
Neither of them said anything else for a while.  
Steve continued to read the report. Tony started working on his projects again.  
He cleared his throat. “Eh, listen,” Tony started. “You want me to look into it?”  
Steve looked at him quizzically. “Look into what?”  
“The kid, you want me to see what happened to him? I mean he’d be what? 70 now. Maybe he’s still around somewhere.”  
“I don’t know, Tony. Maybe it is not a good idea.”  
But Tony wasn’t listening he was already typing furiously on a StarkPad he had produced from somewhere. “Alright, let me just see what I can find, and when I tell you, you can still decide to do nothing about it. How’s that sound?” he asked.  
Even though Steve really wasn’t feeling like this was a good plan he agreed.

A month later Tony had handed him a family tree after one of the Avengers missions. John Rogers had married at the age of 32 and him and his wife had a little daughter 10 months after the wedding. Edith, Steve’s granddaughter. She married young and had two sons. Despite still feeling unsure about the whole affair Steve had decided he wanted to know more about this family of his. He talked to Sam and Natasha about it and both encouraged him to learn more Edith and her kids. That is how Steve discovered his granddaughter and her husband had died nearly a decade ago in a car accident. Edith’s husband had been drinking. The children, Clinton and Charles Bernard were put into foster care. Three years later they disappear without a trace.

“How is that even possible,” Steve asked. He and the fellow Avengers were recovering from another mission. (Trying to find and destroy any remaining HYDRA agents.) They were sitting in the common living room of Avengers Tower. Bruce was half sleeping on one of the sofas, hulking out always exhausted him. Natasha sat next to him, she had a bandage on her left arm where she had been grazed by a bullet. Tony had a second sofa all to himself. He was applying some ice packs to the bruises he had received in the battle. Sam Wilson, the newest addition to the Avengers, sat next to Steve on the third sofa. Neither of them had been wounded in the fight. Thor had left earth shortly after the fight ended, he was needed in Asgard for some diplomatic mission.   
“I just don’t understand it,” Steve continued. “How can two boys just vanish? They must have gone somewhere.”  
“Maybe the police just didn’t search all that much,” Bruce suggested. “Kids run away all the time. I’m sure when they have parents who kick up a big fuss the police spends their resources on them. But those two were in the foster system. They probably thought it was a waste of time.”  
“I’m afraid Bruce is right,” Sam said. “Once you are seen as a run away the authorities stop worrying much about you. It’s similar with homeless people.”  
“You talked to Children’s services, right?” Natasha asked.  
“Yes, I talked to a caseworker at the office of children and family services. She said the boys are still on active lists of missing persons. Charles, the older boy is no longer a minor but Clinton is only 16.”  
“And what are you going to do now?” asked Bruce.   
“There’s not much I can do. They put me down as next of kin, so if there are any news I’ll hear about it.”


	4. Chapter 4

Clint awkwardly sat in the passenger seat of the car. The hospital had released him under strict instructions to take it easy and not over exert himself. Under normal circumstances Clint would have laughed; his life did not often allow him to " take things easy". But apparently now it would. Or at least if Steve could be believed. He had nodded earnestly at everything the doctor had said. And even written down the instructions for the painkillers that Clint was supposed to get. Clint could just imagine what Trickshot would have done with prescription pain killers, and it did not involve giving them to the stupid kid who had gotten his arm broken.

Steve and the social worker were standing outside of the car talking. Clint couldn't make out their words, but he also didn't try. He was sure they were talking about him though.

Outside of the car Steve shook Tom's hand walked over to the driver's side door. We smiled at Clint through the side window and Clint frowned back.  
Steve opened the door and sat down behind the wheel.

"Ready to get out of here?" He asked cheerfully. Clint didn't respond.  
"I bet you’re glad to get out of that hospital, huh buddy?" Again Clint said nothing.  
"I always hated being in hospitals," Steve said, apparently not caring that Clint was ignoring him.   
“I know I don’t look it now,” Steve chuckled, “but I used to spend a lot of time in hospitals, as a kid. I was sick all the time. But it was very different back in...the day.”  
Neither of them said anything for a while, as Steve drove off the hospital parking lot.

After about 5 minutes of quiet, Steve spoke up again:   
“After I found out yesterday that you’d come home with me I prepared your room a bit. But after you are feeling better we can always redecorate. Same goes for clothes.” Steve seemed to wait for some sort of acknowledgement from Clint. Clint stayed silent. During their talk in the hospital Steve had not shown any signs of wanting to hit him, even after he had done his best to antagonize the guy.

Clint figured it was time to try a different approach. Not that he wanted to be hit, hell no, especially not when he was still feeling so shitty. But it was best to know what he was getting into. Know your enemy and all that.

Steve looked over at Clint, and apparently decided not to force Clint to speak.  
“Since your social worker said you didn’t have anything with you, I asked a friend of mine to buy you some clothes while we were getting everything sorted at the hospital. The nurses gave me a good guess of what size clothes you need.”  
Clint wanted to keep ignoring Steve, but it was hard. The guy was talking with such an earnest tone, and he kept looking at Clint. And the idea that he’d be getting new stuff just sounded too good to be true. So Clint looked over at Steve, his mouth tried to start a smile, but luckily Clint was able to stop that. No need to make Steve feel like he was going to like him.  
“Don’t worry,” Steve continued, smiling. “the clothes won’t be too terrible. Just some comfy sweats to wear while you recover, and then we can go an buy you anything you need.” 

Clint nodded, giving up on ignoring Steve.   
Clint felt uncomfortable in the car; it was so new and felt like it had never been used before. Frowning he ran his hands over the beige leather of the chair, a movement that Steve noticed. 

“It’s a nice car, isn’t it?” he smiled, “I borrowed it from a friend, I don’t really own a car. No need for it in a city like New York if you ask me.”  
Clint felt like answering but I didn’t ask you, but kept his mouth shut.  
“I live in Brooklyn, so I’m afraid you and me will be stuck in this car together for some time.”

Clint nodded. “uh, is your friend, like, rich?” he gestured to the car. It was roomy and the most modern car Clint had ever been in.   
When Steve had started up the car a little flat screen had come out of the console and was now showing a map of their location. Clint had no idea what all the knobs and buttons where for. The steering wheel had 4 overlapping silver rings on it, but Clint didn’t know which brand that was; it wasn’t like he ever saw many fancy cars when he was still with the circus.

At his question Steve laughed out loud. He grinned: “Yes, I think you can say that. To tell you the truth, it’s Tony Stark.”  
“Who?”  
“Oh, I thought… most people I have met… So many people know him.” Steve smiled sheepishly, Clint shrugged, just another thing he didn’t know. Great Job looking like an idiot he thought.  
“Don’t worry about it,” Steve said, “before I met Tony I also didn’t know about him,” he chuckled. “He is a big shot engineer and inventor and owns a company called Stark Industries. So yeah, you can say that he is rich.”  
“How does a history teacher meet some rich-ass inventor dude?”  
Steve’s smile wavered for a bit, “I, uh,” he stammered a little. Clint frowned.  
“Mostly through common friends,” Steve said eventually. “If I have to be honest, we didn’t really get along when we first met.”  
“So, why’d he let you take his car? He trying to get in your pants or som’thing?”  
Steve’s face turned an interesting shade of pink , which he quickly tried to cover up.   
“No, Clint, it’s not… No. We are just friends and he.. he doesn’t really need the car today. So I could take it to pick you up from the hospital.”  
Clint smiled at Steve and then stopped as soon as he noticed what he was doing.

It was strange, Steve seemed embarrassed by the idea that this Tony guy could be into him, but he hadn’t been upset at all by the implication that either Tony or himself could be queer. If Clint had said something like this to his own dad… He didn’t want to think about it.

 

At some point of the car drive Clint must have fallen asleep, because the last thing he remembered was the stop and go driving on some bridge. The next thing he knew, they were parking on the sidewalk in front of a red brick townhouse.

Steve moved as if he wanted to lightly shake Clint awake, but when he saw that Clint’s eyes were open he stopped with his arm half way to Clint.   
“You live here?” Clint asked.  
“Yes my, uhm, our, apartment is on the second floor.”


	5. Chapter 5

Steve's apartment turned out to be on the 5th floor. With no elevator. Which was no problem for Steve who looked like he ran up 30 story buildings for fun. But Clint was struggling to walk even one flight of stairs.

After the first floor Steve had offered to help Clint walk but he had angrily refused. Since then Clint was slowly walking up the stairs, holding the handrail in a deathgrip. Steve insisted on walking next to him, in case Clint would faint or collapse somehow.  
Clint was concentrating hard on waking, so he did not have time to look at the whole place in detail. From what he could make out the building was pretty well kept, but old.

  
The wooden steps looked worn, but newly painted. Each floor held 3 doors, most of those had nicely painted name signs under the doorbell. Some even had a few pairs of shoes on the outside. This was certainly a nicer building than any of the ones Clint had lived in as a kid.  
Finally they reached the fifth floor. Steve pointed towards the door on the far right. There were no shoes standing in front of it. And the sign under the doorbell was just a computer written strip of paper that read "Rogers".

  
Steve led the two of them into his apartment and straight through to the living room. There was a big soft looking sofa and two matching armchairs, standing towards one side of the room, surprisingly not aimed towards at TV. To Clint’s astonishment he couldn’t see a TV in the whole living room. He didn’t know if that was a sign for something. Maybe Steve was some crazy nut who thought all the media did was tell lies?  
“How about you take a seat and give your body a little break?” Steve suggested.  
Clint wanted to protest, but after walking up all the way to the apartment he felt extremely tired, and like his body might collapse under him at any moment. So he made his way to the sofa and let himself fall down on it.

  
Steve vanished from the room, and came back a few minutes later with a glass of water and some pills in his hand.  
He forced the pills on Clint, who wasn’t all that willing to numb himself again with painkillers. And who didn’t want to fall asleep in Steve’s neat living room. Maybe he had some rules against sleeping on the sofa?  
Despite vehemently fighting against falling asleep, Clint found himself drifting off as Steve was clattering around in what Clint presumed was the kitchen to the right of the living room.

  
Steve was worried about the kid. Sure the social worker had warned him before he met Clint in the hospital. Steve had been told about Clint’s past, and how that might influence his behaviour. But that still didn’t quite prepare Steve for how distrustful the kid was.  
For god’s sake. The kid was so young, yet Steve recognised how Clint’s facial features twiched every time someone came too close to him. He had seen that expression before. Not on a teenagers face. But on the faces of soldiers they had rescued during the war. On the faces of soldiers desperate to prove to the world and to themselves that they were fine. That they would fight through this.  
It pained Steve to know that Clint must feel similarly, and it wasn’t any member of the axis powers who had done it to him.  
Luckily the kid was sleeping now. Lying on the sofa, even in sleep with a scowl on his face.  
Steve thought about putting a blanket over him, but decided against it. He didn’t want to wake Clint up. His body needed the rest, needed a chance to recover from the terrible beating he had taken.

  
Steve went into his kitchen, he kept the door that separated it from the living room open, so that he could keep an ear and eye out for Clint.  
Bruce had recently given him a recipe for a thai curry that he’d wanted decided to cook now. He started finely cutting up carrots while rice was cooking on the stove. Every few minutes he looked through to the living room to see Clint still sleeping.  
In his sleep Clint noticed the smells in the apartment changing, he was in a new and strange place. Normally any small vibration of the bed, or change in the room would wake him up with a start. But now, with drugs running through his system, he registered the change, but was too numb to wake up. In his dream, he got up from the sofa and packed his bag, but then he realized it was only a dream, and that he was still asleep.  
“Clint,” a voice said. Sounding far away. “Hey, buddy, time to wake up.” Clint groaned. He wanted to keep sleeping. He didn’t want to wake up, and face the day, Trick was only going to make him train with… All of a sudden Clint was wide awake. He didn’t move, lay stock still in his bed. Only he wasn’t in his bed in the trailer at all. In his sleep he had forgotten where he was. He had thought that he was still… But no. He was in some stranger’s living room, sleeping on the sofa.  
Clint held his breath. Steve. He had talked to him. Had told him to get up. And Clint hadn’t listened. He had ignored him.  
Nothing happened. Clint lay, stiff as a board, trying to breath as soundlessly as possible. But nothing happened. Steve didn’t start yelling. Or throwing things at him to wake him up.

Slowly, Clint opened his eyes. He was alone in the living room. A small lamp on a chest of drawers was turned on, giving of a warm yellow glow. Another light source was the door to the kitchen. It was open, and light as well as food smells were coming into the living room.

Clint sat up, slowly and carefully. Now that his right ear wasn’t lying on a pillow anymore he could hear sounds coming from the kitchen. The slight clink of glasses being put on a table.  
He got up from the sofa and walked over to the kitchen. Looking in, he saw Steve setting the table. A weirdly shaped pan was on the stove, next to it a smaller normal looking pot.

Despite making very little noise Steve must have heard him, because he turned around and smiled at Clint.  
“Hey, bud. I thought you might want to eat something”

Clint wanted to say no. But the food smelled so nice. And Clint thought: if the guy is going to poison me he won’t do it on the first day. CPS and social workers might not be the smartest, but even the slowest social worker would get suspicious if a kid died on the first day in a new family.

“Yeah,” Clint said “I could eat.”  
From the grin on Steve’s face you would have guessed that Clint had just proclaimed him the best cook in the world.

“Great!” Steve gestured to the table. “Have a seat. I’ll just take the wok of the stove.”  
Clint was saved from asking what the hell a wok was when Steve went and picked up the strange looking pan and placed it on the table.

“I made chicken in a coconut curry sauce. I hope you like curry.”

Clint just shrugged. Most of the curry he had ever tasted had been in the form of curry ketchup, so he could not say for sure. But he always loved coconut.

Steve kept talking: “When I was a kid, we didn’t eat such, exotic, food” Steve grimaced at the word exotic. “A friend made it for me when, um… when I moved here, and I love it.”

Steve’s smile was back. He took the normal pot from the stove and piled some rice out of it on his and Clint’s plate. Then he scooped some of the curry on each of their plates. It was a thick, slightly yellow sauce with chicken bits, pieces of carrots and some green vegetable in it. Clint knew that one, but he couldn’t remember the name. He took a bite of the food. It tasted great. The coconut milk gave a sweet flavor, the chicken was nice and tender and the green vegetables were nice and crunchy.

Clint began shoveling spoonfuls of the sauce and rice in his mouth.  
“So, you like it?” Steve asked with a grin.  
“Yeah, it’sh great!” Clint replied with food in his mouth, he grinned widely at Steve, not caring that all the rice in his mouth made him look a bit like a hamster, with cheeks full of food.

Clint continued to chew happily while Steve was eating at a more measured pace.

After Clint had cleared all the food from his plate Steve offered to have some more from the pots, but Clint just shrugged happily.  
“Nah, I’m good. Was real nice,” for the first time he smiled ate Steve.  
“But, hey!”, Clint reached into the wok and pulled out one of the green vegetables.  
“What are these called?”  
Steve was torn about wanting to admonish Clint for using his fingers with the food and engaging in the first conversation that Clint had willingly started. After a few seconds he settled for the latter. He could always teach Clint manners at a later point, he reckoned.

“I think they are called Mange Tout, have you ever had them before?”  
“Yeah, they are great.” Clint smiled wide, stuffing the vegetable in his mouth and licking some sauce of his finger. “I thought they were called like dou- something.”  
Clint shrugged.  
“This Chinese lady, at… at the place I live. She used to make food with it all the time.”

Steve was surprised by this news, the police had not been able to tell exactly where Clint and his brother had vanished to after they disappeared from their last foster home.

“You lived with an Asian woman?” he asked?

Clint looked away from Steve, shrugged again, and said: “nah, ‘s not like that. I mean, she was there too. An’ sometimes she let us eat with her. When… when.” Clint stopped talking.  
He shrugged again. Steve was beginning to think it was Clint’s go to expression.

Clint stood up from the table put his plate in the sink and left the room.

Apparently Clint had shared enough for one day.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll see where this goes, this is my first work that isn't just a one shot.


End file.
